Practical checklists for regulatory teams

Licensing decision-making

Use before a contested hearing, or as an annual health check on committee practice.

1. Is the current statement of licensing policy within its five-year review period?
2. Does the policy give committees something specific enough to apply, and is any cumulative impact assessment supported by current evidence?
3. Do reports separate relevant representations from irrelevant ones, and explain why?
4. Have all parties seen everything the committee will see, including late material?
5. Does the reasons template prompt findings on each disputed issue rather than an outcome only?
6. Are conditions precise, enforceable and tied to a named licensing objective?
7. Where the committee departs from policy, is the departure identified and explained?
8. Are reasons settled while the deliberation is fresh, with legal support available?
9. Are site visits recorded, and is anything observed put to the parties for comment?
10. Is there a route for reviewing decisions that were appealed or challenged, so the lesson is captured?

Street trading and markets framework

Use when deciding whether a legacy framework needs modernising, and how much of it.

1. Can you produce every instrument in force: adopting resolution, designations, byelaws, market rights and any local Act provisions?
2. Do the current designations match how the streets are actually used today?
3. Is newly created public realm designated at all?
4. Are standard conditions specific, verifiable and proportionate to a defined harm?
5. Can the fee model be explained on a cost recovery basis to a trader or a scrutiny committee?
6. Is there a current adopted street trading policy that individual decisions can be consistent with?
7. Is the delegation for determining consents clear and up to date?
8. Do the enforcement arrangements reflect what officers can realistically do?
9. Are market rights and street trading regulated coherently, or in tension with each other?
10. Does the trading framework support the regeneration objectives the authority has adopted elsewhere?

Procurement Act readiness

Use to test whether the reformed regime has reached your internal machinery, not just your training records.

1. Have contract procedure rules been reviewed against the Procurement Act 2023, and has a date for member approval been set?
2. Does the scheme of delegation say who may approve a direct award and on what basis?
3. Is every notice obligation mapped to a named owner and a date?
4. Is there a reporting route when publication slips?
5. Is there a written exclusion and self-cleaning assessment process, agreed before it is needed?
6. Do evaluation templates produce assessment summaries capable of being issued unamended?
7. Is there a moderation trail that shows how scores were reached?
8. Does the forward plan give enough lead time for pipeline notices?
9. Is contract performance information being collected as well as published?
10. Does the audit committee receive assurance on all of the above at least annually?

Regulatory governance and assurance

Use ahead of an audit committee report or a governance self-assessment.

1. Is the scheme of delegation current, and does practice match it?
2. Can each significant regulatory decision be traced to a person with authority to take it?
3. Are policies within their review period, and is there an owner for each?
4. Where audit or scrutiny has made findings, is there evidence the remedy was implemented rather than merely accepted?
5. Do officers have templates that produce defensible records without institutional memory?
6. Is there a single view of regulatory risk across licensing, enforcement, markets and trading standards?
7. Are training obligations for members and officers defined and monitored?
8. Does the assurance reporting tell members what is actually going wrong, or only what has been completed?

Using these checklists

These are working tools rather than a statement of law. They are drawn from the questions that come up repeatedly in advisory work, and they are deliberately short enough to be used in a meeting.

If a formatted version would be useful for circulation internally, or you would like a checklist adapted to your own framework and committee arrangements, ask and we will send one. There is no charge and no obligation attached to it.